Appropriate Legislation
If one sells a device to consumers, and included with the device is a promise to supply certain server services to the owner of it in perpetuity, obviously we need laws by means of which that promise is enforced.
If the servers shut down, the government seizes them, and uses the IRS to bill the company for keeping them running. And, of course, the government has absolute priority over all other creditors.
If companies know that's how things like this will be handled - they will invest part of the price of such products into something that will yield enough interest to pay for the servers.
But I'm afraid that isn't realistic, if only because there are no ironclad investments that are guaranteed not to lose money and to have a minimum yield of interest that can be relied upon. Currencies inflate. There's even a movement afoot to abolish paper money so that negative interest rates can be brought in.
What I still haven't figured out is how we can abolish inflation by going back to the gold standard, and yet have fiscal and monetary policies that ensure full employment forever.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
